Push

June 2007

With this . . . thing . . . growing in Sarah, keeping the Big Secret means nonstop paranoia. We feel like sophomores who have been smoking pot all afternoon, certain that everyone can tell we’re baked, and that everyone is whispering behind our backs. They’re not, not yet. But it does feel like everyone is talking about babies, which of course isn’t true. It’s just that, for the first time, I’m paying attention.

We had a big deck party and it was babies this and babies that all afternoon. Sarah and I tried hard not to make eye contact in fear that we would be found out. One guy, a creative director at DDB or something, told me he was looking to patent a strap-on vest for fathers filled with milk so they could “breastfeed” their babies when Mom wasn’t around. He called it . . . wait for it . . . “The Milkman.” I thought it was brilliant, until Sarah asked me if I would ever consider wearing one. (Editor’s note: not long after, the writers of Meet the Fockers had the same idea and put Robert DeNiro in one. Coincidence? Editor’s note #2: Boy, DeNiro’s career has really blossomed.) …

One night on our camping trip, after Sarah fell into an unpleasant-sounding sleep, I continued to read by the light of the flickering campfire. Random information jumped off the page—seven servings a day of fruits and vegetables . . . eight glasses of water . . . lots of milk and dairy products—until it all started to give me a headache. Then I came across an alarming passage. Turns out that a number of men suffer from the nagging fear that their wife’s baby is not theirs. Whether or not they trust their wife’s faithfulness is beside the point. The doubt is a common psychological response for men when they’re first hit with a mind-blowing notion: I am powerful enough to create a life.